Don't Track Me, Bro

After Google released its unified policy changes, many who do not want advertisers to know everything about their habits are seeking ways to keep pesky advertisers from targeting them with ads. Here are a few ways to keep your online experience free from the annoyance of targeted ads.

Tor Tor is a great way to hide your browsing from anyone who is looking. Tor protects you from network surveillance and anyone trying to jump in on your online privacy. People use it to protect their personal privacy, business activities, relationships, and to keep people from watching which sites they view. An alternative is joining Privacy Choice.

VPNs
VPN’s are great to keep your online business private. Whether you are checking your bank account, or participating in an online protest, your ISPs can’t track where you’re going or what you’re doing. They hide your IP address and provide a strong layer of identity protection, making it harder for people to follow you. Combine this with creating an alternate online identity, and you will be as safe as it gets. Using Tor in conjunction with BolehVPN improves security greatly, and is an excellent way of protecting your privacy.

Extensions
Using extensions (such as ad-block) not only keeps ads off your browsing experience, but it can also keep advertisers from snooping in on you. Google has had a history of adding several of these to Chrome, but there is a relatively newer extension that is fundamentally different than the rest. Keep My Opt-Outs is just that: a way to opt out of user specific advertising. It sort of works like a “do not call list” for internet users, and hopes to work just as well. We’ll have to wait and see how well it delivers, as companies are not required to adhere to any standard of ad-tracking yet. AVG also offers a “Do Not Track” feature as well.

Ghostery Ghostery is an interesting and simple tool to let you know who is tracking you, and allowing you to block them in return. It sees invisible web-tags and bugs, and gives you a roll-call of the ad-networks. You can choose to block or ignore these, making it a more straightforward approach to the problem. It can’t get simpler than this.